I’m just getting started with ESPHome. I have an Atom Lite, and have installed ESPresense (using the faciltity at: Install Firmware | ESPresense). I can access the console page for it, and it seems to be generating MQTT messages.
I’d now like to add an IR Receiver to the Atom Lite, with a view to using an IR remote control to trigger automations in Home Assistant. I have found the relevant docs for the yaml required to add IR Receiver functionality to an ESPHome device, but I’m not clear on what to do next…
(1) Can I add IR Receiver functionality to an ESPHome device that is already running ESPresense?
(2) How would I go about editing the yaml and uploading it to the Atom Lite?
(3) I’m running HA Core in a Docker container (so no access to add-ons from the HA console). Do I need to install ESPHome (e.g. in a Docker container)?
(4) I have tried adding the ESPHome Integration from the HA Console, but don’t know what to specify for the Host and Port. Assuming that I need to install this integration, what values should I be using for the Host and Port?
I’m sort of a newb at this but as someone who just installed (and removed) espresence, I think I can help you with some questions.
ESPresence does not work through esphome in the sense that you will not see your device under ESPHome. ESpresence creates a device in HA as and publishes mqtt topics. You can then create your HA entities in your HA config to track certain devices that ESPresence picks up.
Having said that, the ESPresence software does have support for external sensors, such weight sensors, motion sensors, etc that can be used to immediately detect presence. go to the settings page for the espresence device and you can see what options there are, and the place to set the pin # to use that sensor. I successfully added the pin # for my m5 stick to use the pIR hat for motion sensing. Hope this helps!
Ah OK thanks for that. It sounds like I’ll need to either re-flash the Atom with ESPHome, or buy another one if I want to add IR receiver functionality.
It looks like I’ll also need to work out how to turn incoming IR events into MQTT messages, which could be challenging as I’m not an Arduino developer!
Buy another esp. You don’t need to convert to mqtt, esphome has an api.
Ah OK. So if I define a sensor, switch, etc in the yaml config of the ESPHome device, that sensor/switch will be visible as an entity in HA?
Exactly this. That’s what makes ESPHome so powerful/useful (and why I’ve pretty much entirely switched over to it for my projects). Instead of spending 10% of my time on the actual project and the other 90% getting it to play nice with other things, most all of the repetitive setup is handled for you.